What we need to learn from the French workers and how our corporate media spin it.UPDATE(5/30)...Is there a total news blackout now?
This is from the Socialist Workerand has their slant if any: Huge strikes shut France down—and could bring government to its knees
This is from CNN and you can see what they think of workers: French workers step up protests as gas supplies run dry
I have worked in the French University and Research Institutes many times over the years and was always sad to come back home after my experiences there.
I am always saddened when Americans show how ignorant they are about France and the French People.
My work there was both of year long sabbatical duration (twice) and many stints that lasted for a number of weeks.
I was there when General Strikes occurred and was overwhelmed at the power and solidarity the French workers displayed.
When you try to compare France with this country you have no real basis. The French are a proud and often arrogant people but they have earned that right.
I went there to do collaborative science with French colleagues but quickly was swept into another whole world. I have been a political activist since by first job at SUNY Buffalo in 1965. I was always viewed as a radical by my peers. Yet my activities would have been normal or even tame in France.
It would take a book to explain what I mean but let me give a taste here. The scientists I worked and associated with were leaders in their system. Not only scientifically, but politically as well. Most were in the Communist party and ran the union at their University.
The Communist Party in France has no equivalent here. Many of the villages just outside Paris are run by elected Communists. I have observed an election in one of these places where the guy who was hosting my sabbatical lived.
The vote counting was open to observation by all factions and I was allowed to observe as well. The idea that anyone would mess with this sacred right was unthinkable. They really believe in democracy.
That being said it is worth your time reading both versions of what is going on there now. Worker solidarity seems to be back to normal and they are showing the government who makes society possible. That is power! During the strikes that occurred while I was there we stopped our scientific work as well. We were workers like the rest.
I won't say more. You can read the links. I miss France very much.
Comments
Lynxs?
Found. Thanks JtC, and Don.
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
Thanks for this! n/t
I fixed your links Don...
take a look at the code and you'll see where I added the title of the articles between the brackets. If you need any help, just ask.
ty
I still don't understand why It didn't work with the link ap
An idea is not responsible for who happens to be carrying it at the time. It stands or it falls on its own merits.
You didn't fill in the second box...
the one titled "Link text", whatever the text you want to display needs to be entered in that box then you'll be good to go.
ty
An idea is not responsible for who happens to be carrying it at the time. It stands or it falls on its own merits.
You don't even need to fill it in. Just highlight the text you
want to have the link be embedded in and then click the create link button and paste in the URL into the appropriate box. (Works great for when you want to write everything out and then place the links in during final edit.)
"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me
FYI jtc and Don
If anyone shared this article before the title was changed, the page URL won't be found.
i.e., when the title changes, so does the URL.
This is the original title and URL.
http://caucus99percent.com/content/what-we-need-learn-french-workers-and...
and this is the updated title with new URL.
http://caucus99percent.com/content/what-we-need-learn-french-workers-and...
Do you think you'll ever get to go back to France?
I have no idea about your fiscal and physical health, but you might enjoy it very much.
What are you waiting for?
Life is strong. I'm weak, but Life is strong.
I am 80 and have peripheral neuropathy
I can barely stand up for 5 minutes....I will never fly again....maybe by boat?
An idea is not responsible for who happens to be carrying it at the time. It stands or it falls on its own merits.
I feel your pain, literally. :)
I suffer from Neuropathy as well from a syringomyelia in the mid thoracic region of my spinal cord from an injury I receieved working in Corrections (Kind of like a little water balloon in the middle of the cord.) that causes pain and massive spasms throughout my torso.
Couple that with a steel plate and 4 screws in my neck from where I fractured it in 3 places BMX racing back in the day means air travel is currently out of the picture for me except for very short duration flights.
It makes me wish we had more of a railway network, I could travel in a sleeper car if I have the ability to sit, stand or lay flat as my body dictates.
But that's ok, when I hit the megabucks I will buy a big boat and you can come along as my translator and guide.
"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me
So sorry to hear about your PN.
So do I, and it's a real hassle to deal with. My physician recommended a daily dose of Duloxetine HCl ("Cymbalta"), and it appears to work in relieving some of the symptoms.
Have you tried it?
There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.
I've long thought a major difference
between Americans and the French
is that while the Americans had a
colonial rebellion the French had a
true revolution.
Only connect. - E.M. Forster
Having Free University helped....
I believe that University is still free in France...
correct me if I am wrong, thanks.
Their general education level is a bit higher there...at least it seemed so
when I went there for school for a summer ~
Peace-
Murph
Having free University does indeed help.
The entire reason for AmeriKKKan Student Loans is to prevent social activism among our college students. And to bond-attach them to the military in wartime, as no peacetime institution in America offers enough money for long enough at a stretch to allow someone to get those loans repaid while the degree is still worth something.
European collegians don't face that problem, as a general rule.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
I read about the strikes
In the Socialist news that someone here dropped a link to. They sure do know how to do it right.
I am in the process of getting dual Italian citizenship for me, my daughter, and her three sons. I am eager. My number one grandson wants to work, study, and live in Sweden. Hopefully at the university. His girl is Belguim. This will be a huge help to him.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
La Marseillaise - the great Berlioz arrangement
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_JuRwRowWM
Mark F. McCarty
Perhaps it's that since the Nazi Occupation. . .
. . . the French are not afraid anymore. Like Evie in "V for Vendetta."
Why are we Americans such cowards that we will not bite the hand that feeds (not enough)?
All I need are some tasty waves, a cool buzz, and I'm fine. -- Jeff Spicoli
cowards
Not cowards; simply not stupid.
America spends more on military than all other nations combined. And that firepower trickles down to the police authorities, as it does everywhere.
France discovered that the Nazis were defeatable if you chose the right friends, friends who were more powerful than the Nazis militarily.
Who do the American working-class choose for our friends? Who can fight our MIC and our militarized police (milice)? (See also Christian Scriptures, Revelation 13:4)
??
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Still Americans of all political stripes
are cowards in the sense that large swaths of the population refuse to look at what is going down both here and globally. They stick their heads in the sand and loudly proclaim this is the best country on earth. It's democratic, it's humanitarian, it's doing god's work. Nationalism writ large.
Fear of the clamp down from the establishment enforcers does not explain why the American public is unwilling to take a good look at what we are. Nobody wants to admit that they have been duped and are living a lie. do they believe this shit? do they think the Horatio Alger myth is real? Are they all screw or get screwed cappies to the point that they care not about the common good of humanity or the planet?
Right is might and the belief that the world consists of winners and losers seems to run deep in the American psyche. I got mine so screw you. You losers just want free stuff. Play the game loser. It's a cruel and viscous mind set that permeates our society. At least the comfortable 20-30% of successful people.
Even the comfortable middle class, well to do liberals, who see what going down are not about to hit the streets. They are invested in the status quo it's their life. They own property they have careers and a family to support they are professionals. I don't blame them they bought the dream. They played the game they are winners. Why would they bite the hand that feeds them? It's so much easier to except the delusion if you are doing okay under the system.
Why do these people buy huge honking earth destroying SUV's? Or giant urban Mac Mansions. Why do they think sweat from exercising is a real issue or that their right to wear tart shoes is women's liberation? They are educated they know about global warming. Why do they support the politics that offer nothing more then the same old at a time like this? Fear of cops, spooks or the MIC? I doubt it. Their doing okay Jack. They have convinced themselves that this is the best of worlds and that victory for compromise is the way forward. Somehow how this is progress. These people I understand I live among them.
They do not care about women who are poor or live in places we use as sweatshops (including the US) or those we bomb, drone and create living hell in. Shipped back to a Honduras this country created as a lesson to their negligent parent's. Yeah right. They care about getting their offspring in 'decent schools' with Japanese emergence offered. Ask me they out to get their freaking kids in a Chinese emergence program as they seem to be buying up Portland. Perhaps the gatekeepers believe this crap. They are fixated on the RW the ultimate enemy, other as the source of all our ills. They are wrong it's them they consent to this brave new world as it is inevitable and pays their bills.
Darkly Beautiful and Spot On
Sorry I didn't see this until now.
All I need are some tasty waves, a cool buzz, and I'm fine. -- Jeff Spicoli
edited, because I told someone to take his comment back
... that's not what I should do. Also I made an assumption that I could not possibly make as I don't know the facts.
Sorry, for that.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Hello don mikulecki
Thank you for your article.
The United States is not the only country whose media views the current situation in France with disdain for the rights of workers.
German media has presented its bias against workers as well - and yes, sorry, once again the board of Der Spiegel sits in the pole position of this global fight against labor.
Of course, there are (relatively) conservative media outlets in France which cover these events through somewhat different perspectives. Comments, genuine or not, reflect a broader spectrum, though I have no statistics and do not spend much time reading them.
Why ought workers agree to cooperate with a system which is designed only to funnel more profit to a smaller number of individuals?
Peace and love be with you, reader.
Hollande handing France over to Le Pen
I cannot believe that Hollande is still in power. He has no clue how to run his own personal life much less France, and the natives are getting restless. Islamic unrest and the recent terror attacks are turning the French away from their traditional liberalism and toward a government of stronger power and control. Hollande has almost nothing to work with to prevent this, having squandered it to remain in power to date. He's running out of friends, and he's running out of time. All that is necessary is a major shock of some kind (Brexit?) and he's toast.
Vowing To Oppose Everything Trump Attempts.
true
I work with some french guys that work for a french company on a project in the US. They say that because of the 'elements' there the parks are constantly staffed with very well armed military personnel and that is the case in various locations throughout the country. However, they are treated 250% better by their employer than the American workers they are working with. They actually have a life.
It's been building since March.
Thanks for this article
The president of Turkey has also condemned the corporate media blackout:
And yes, the corporate bias against the corporate slaves in favor of the corporate task masters is clear: "The workers are protesting a labor reform bill put forward by the government that will make it easier for companies to hire and fire employees." CNN
I might have written: "The workers are protesting an extreme pro-business bill put forward by the government that will dismantle worker protections and make it easier for companies to fire employees, and require that employees remain on call at all times, 'willing' forfeiting any remaining personal time outside of serving corporate interests." But that's just my POV ...
thanks for that
I think it is really a serious situstion
An idea is not responsible for who happens to be carrying it at the time. It stands or it falls on its own merits.
Hello GrayWolf
I would point out that Erdogan is saying this for only one reason: because his brutal repression of popular protests elicited rebukes from European governments and news agencies.
Erdogan is a populist dictator. Not to defend the actions of French police, but Turkey is a country with a horrendous civil rights record, then and now.
In any case, no one outside of Turkey is listening to what any member of the Turkish government has to say in this matter. This is all for the consumption of his "electorate," essentially, the Fox Nation equivalent of Turkey and its diaspora.
Peace and love be with you, reader.
thanks for the info
I visit many sites to get different points of vies and I can end up in some pretty sleazy places.
(but just the contrast between the socialist view vs. the CNN corporate view was enough, and I really didn't need to go down all the dark alleys that I did go down ...)
This is an excellent thread. The bill also contains the
ability to work employees without paying overtime. This would be called an omnibus labor reform bill and was a large leap.
What Sarkozy did in 2010, changing retirement from 60 to 62, caused fairly strenuous manifestations, but nothing like what is happening now. Then as now, the marchers targeted the means of transportation: ports, refineries, trains.
There are several layers of police: at the local level...village or communal police, who generally are in unions; large cities have civil police; then there is the Gendarmerie, which have barracks throughout the country especially rural areas, as the état is deeply afraid of another revolution. They listen throughout France for the sounds of true association and meaningful movements which can gain steam and cause violence. This goes back to 1789. And several republics since.
The black dressed and heavily geared troops are military as in French Army. They may even be facing unionized local police in these repressions.
We are having some difficulty in the Provinces getting the Paris news. And it is not the only large city having protests: Marseilles, Lyon, Strasbourg, others? Looking for a map which shows the locations. Earlier in the month there were several versions available.
You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again you did not know. ~ William Wiberforce
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